Build-a-God: the DIY Religion of the New Age

The seductive allure of the spiritual marketplace

Have you ever heard of “The Secret”? You’ve probably seen it on TikTok, Instagram, and maybe even your vision board: “Just manifest it.” It sounds harmless. Just a bit of empowering self-help in lieu of therapy. But beneath the glossy affirmations and glittering crystals lies an ancient gnostic heresy. Despite its seductive allure, the entire edifice of the New Age and its trendy corollaries is a spiritual counterfeit, promising divine power over reality and insight into the hidden machinations of reality. And millions are buying in. Welcome to the Spiritual Marketplace, where the self is god, magic replaces grace, and enlightenment is just a vibe away.

Indeed, the very concept of a “spiritual marketplace” is part of the appeal of the New Age. It presents a whole array of spiritual options to choose from, to allow you to form your own custom religion. It’s like “Build-a-Bear” but for spirituality. It is deeply individualistic and thus deeply appealing to the American ethos. It’s not uncommon for New Agers to describe themselves as “Seekers,” where their entire spiritual identity is defined in terms of their own personal individual pursuit of the truth. There’s even a term of this: “eclecticism.”

Eclecticism forms one of the fastest growing sects within the vast world of the “spiritual but not religious” i.e. the people who see organized religion as “oppressive” but are not hard nosed atheist materialists and believe in some kind of higher power of spiritual reality. These are the types who dislike Christianity but are, for example, obsessed with reality TV shows about ghost hunting.

You can choose a little bit of astrology. A little bit of yoga. A little bit of Buddhism. A little bit of Norse paganism. A little bit of crystals. A little bit of Reiki. A little bit of Tarot. A little bit of quantum consciousness. A little bit of Law of Attraction. A little bit of hermeticism. A little bit of Gnosticism. A little bit of Wicca. A little bit of Nature worship. A little bit of polytheism. A little bit of Native American religion. Maybe throw in a little bit of esoteric Christianity. A little bit of UFOology. A little bit of Kabbalah. A little bit of chaos magic. A little bit of Luciferianism. A little bit of chakras. A little bit of kundalini energy.

Mix it all together and you have your very own religion, custom made to your own preferences, all without the “oppressive” emphasis on binding moral normativity that comes from Christian moral theology with its emphasis on following God’s commandments and Final Judgment depending on how well you follow those commandments.

The problem, of course, is that having your own religion gets very lonely. You long for a spiritual community. Since nobody shares your own exact preferences, three common options are to (1) Join a cult where homogeneity of belief comes with the cost of dealing with a charismatic but narcissistic leader and all the dangers that entails or (2) join an online “spiritual” community but only in some vague sense of sharing a general predilection for similar “metaphysical” interests while holding onto relativism about the ultimate truth (“your spirituality is true for you and my spirituality is true for me”) or (3) forever remain a “Seeker” in search of answers, always hungry for some deeper spiritual truth but never finding any real answers that satisfy the restlessness of your heart.

There is a loose sense in which all of this New Age spirituality is thematically related.

An Ancient Heresy

The root cause goes back to the general gnostic principle which roots spiritual enlightenment primarily in one’s own “inner consciousness.” This is the seductive and dualistic idea that we all have a “spark of divinity” inside of us imprisoned within the illusory and corrupt world of bodily flesh, and the goal of spirituality is to do some deep introspection and discover this authentic spiritual spark inside you so that you can find salvation through the manifestation of your inner spark.

Furthermore, this kind of spirituality is almost always associated with an attempt to gain temporal power over the spiritual domain so that you can achieve some degree of health, wealth, or prosperity. This is the root of “magic” where “magicians” are people who use their willpower to gain mastery over the world to achieve some instrumental end.

All of this is premised on the ancient hermetic doctrine, “As above, so below” which argues that because material reality is isomorphic with spiritual reality, if we manipulate spiritual reality (e.g. with Tarot card symbolism) we can therefore see results manifest in material reality. This is also the premise of astrology: the material world is a reflection of the spiritual world and vice versa; magic is the technique of learning to manipulate this isomorphism.

This is the core basis of the seductive allure of all New Age philosophies. Wish you had some more money? Perform a money spell. Wish you had a better job? Use your mental powers to imagine that you already have that dream job, and this “positive” mental state will attract the “positive” thing you desire aka take advantage of the “Law of Attraction,” otherwise known as “manifesting.”

Dreaming of your future boyfriend? Create a vision board to make it come true! Want to talk to a dead loved one? Go visit a psychic medium. Wishing to know what to do in some critical decision? Ask the Tarot cards for wisdom! Sick in need of a cure? Hold the right crystal in your hand to heal yourself with a healing frequency. Need to protect yourself from evil spirits or bad vibes? Smudge your house with white sage. Need to talk to the spirit world? Get an ouija board (actually, please don’t.)

It’s easy to see the appeal of the New Age. It’s the same reason the Prosperity Gospel is so popular. It promises material prosperity and personal success if only you perform the right ritual, utter the right words, take the right mental attitude, or appease the gods (or universe) in just the right way.

The Christian Critique

However, this whole transactional tit-for-tat spirituality is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus did not promise His disciples would be living large with great jobs, lots of money, abundant health, and beautiful spouses. On the contrary, He said:

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

Indeed, he does not promise prosperity but instead promises that you will be hated and persecuted if you’re a true disciple of His:

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you… If they persecuted me, they will persecute you…” (John 15: 18-20)

2 Timothy 3:12 says, “Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

How New Thought Twists Scripture

Two popular New Age Gurus who were influential in the Law of Attraction world, also known as “New Thought” or “positive mind metaphysics,” James Allen and Neville Goddard, even used the Bible to justify their New Age metaphysics, viewing the Bible a metaphysical allegory about the creative power of thought. Allen, best known for As a Man Thinketh, grounds his philosophy in Proverbs 23:7: “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Allen argued that one’s thoughts shape one’s character, circumstances, and destiny. He also draws from Galatians 6:7 (“whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”) and Matthew 12:35 (“A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things”), interpreting these as laws of mental causation. Neville Goddard goes further, claiming that the human imagination is God, and that by assuming the feeling of a fulfilled desire (Mark 11:24: “whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it”), one can manifest reality. For both men, biblical events and persons are not literal but symbolic of inner states of consciousness, and salvation is not through grace or faith in Christ, but through mental discipline and awakening to one’s divine creative power.

From a Catholic perspective, this interpretation is a grave distortion of the true meaning of Scripture. While the Bible affirms that our thoughts can influence our actions (cf. Proverbs 4:23), it never teaches that the mind alone has divine creative power. The verse “as a man thinketh in his heart” (Prov. 23:7) is not a metaphysical principle, but part of a warning against deceitful hospitality. The New Thought reading ignores the Bible’s overarching message: that man is fallen (Romans 3:23), salvation comes only through grace (Ephesians 2:8–9), and that faith in Jesus Christ, not mental visualization, restores us to God.

The idea that imagination is God blasphemously replaces the living, personal God with the self, which is ultimately the root of philosophy of all New Age and magical systems. It reduces Christianity to a form of spiritualized self-help, denying the necessity of the Cross, the sacraments, and divine grace. Catholic tradition affirms that while our cooperation with grace matters, we are not the authors of our reality: God alone is Creator, and we are His creatures called to obedience, not self-deification.

The Consequences of Protestantism

One cannot help but note that this form of radical personal interpretation of the meaning of Scripture is a direct fall out of the Protestant revolt, which ultimately makes every man his own Pope when it comes to determining the “true meaning” of what Scripture says, since there is no binding Magisterial teaching tradition to prevent people from going so far astray.

It is no surprise then that early New England America, with its deeply Protestant roots, became known for its obsession with occultism, spiritualism, seances, and became known as the “burned over” country because so many spiritual fads came and went in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, leaving behind a trail of spiritual destruction.

This intense spiritual fervor gave rise not only to Protestant revivals but also to a surge of heterodox movements, including Mormonism, Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and other occult and utopian experiments. The region became fertile ground for unorthodox beliefs because of its religious zeal, social experimentation, and lack of established church structures. The phrase “burned over” reflects how the area was so frequently evangelized and spiritually inflamed that little “fuel” remained for new converts, yet ironically, it became a hotbed for occultism, mysticism, and religious innovation that rejected traditional Christianity.

As we can see then, all forms of occultism and New Age are diametrically opposed to authentic Christianity and illustrate the dangers of a total rejection of the Catholic Church’s magisterial teaching authority. When people are free to interpret Scripture however they wish according to their own personal biases and proclivities, you are bound to deviate eventually into the most abominable heresies.

True Christian Mysticism

With that said, I don’t want to give the impression that any form of esotericism or mysticism is incompatible with authentic Christianity. True Christianity is deeply mystical. But the mysticism of Catholic saints is decidedly not about doing interior spiritual reflection in order to manipulate spiritual reality in order to “get what you want.” It’s not about developing special techniques to achieve ecstasy for the sake of spiritual ecstasy.

True mysticism is not antagonistic to a rational defense of the doctrines of the faith. True mysticism is about communion with God, where God is understood according to the creeds of orthodoxy. Theology and mysticism are not antagonistic. If a spiritual New Age guru (or even a progressive Christian thought leader such as Richard Rohr) tries to convince you that true spirituality is “nondualistic” or “nonpropositional,” run far away. True spiritual depth will never contradict the Nicene Creed. True mysticism will never contradict doctrine. Indeed, by the grace of God it will often lead you into a deeper appreciation of the doctrines of the faith.